“All human discoveries seem to be made only for the
purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truths come from on high and
contained in the sacred writings.” John Herschel (1791-1871) discoverer of over
500 new nebulas.

Galileo was born in Pisa in 1564. His father Vincenzio
was a mathematician and musician. As a child Galileo studied logic, Greek, and
Latin, but disliked science, though he liked inventing machines. He was also a
good musician and painter. Until he was 17, his father kept him away from math,
because he was afraid studying math would take him away from his study of
medicine. Galileo became interested in math when he overheard a lesson in
geometry. His father reluctantly sent him to college, Later he had to drop out
though, because of lack of money.

He enjoyed reading of Copernicus and Kepler, but he was
at first reluctant to get into astronomy because he feared ridicule. His first
telescope was 3X magnification, but his best was 32X. They were used all over Europe. He was the first to see the mountains on the moon, the moons of Jupiter, and
sunspots. He believed comets were solar reflections on the air.

Galileo showed off his telescope to Rome in 1611. The
Catholic Church said his views were against scripture. Galileo explained why
they were not, and produced other verses to show the Copernican system (earth
goes around the sun) was true. He received a semi-official warning in 1615 and
the next year he had to pledge to Pope Paul V he would not speak of this
anymore.

In 1633 Galileo later tried to get this pledge revoked,
but instead got examined by the Inquisition. He was released but had to live
secluded for the rest of his life.

Galileo’s troubles with the established church are
famous, but his problem was with the Catholic Church, not Christianity. Galileo
himself was a Christian who witnessed to people and saw support for his
scientific studies in the Bible.

Pascal was a Jensenist, Catholics who believed in much of
Calvinism and incurred the displeasure of the Jesuits. They especially would
not like Pascal, as he gave some witty answers. He knew at least some of the
Bible, and much of the early church fathers, including Augustine, Prosper of
Aquitaine, Chrysostom, Hilary, and Tertullian. He also knew of Maimonides,
Josephus, and Philo. Unfortunately, like many Catholic scholars, he focused
more on tradition and the early church fathers than on the Bible.

Like other Catholics, Pascal believed in purgatory, the
apocrypha, transubstantiation, and that the Pope is the head of the church,
though he acknowledged that many popes were biased. Here are a few quotes from
his main work, the Pensees.

“Christianity is strange. It bids man recognize that he
is vile, even abominable, and bids him desire to be like God. Without such a
counterpoise, this dignity would make him horribly vain, or this humiliation
would make him terribly abject.” Pensees 7.537.

Pascal
and Other Religions

“It is a deplorable thing to see all men deliberating on
means alone, and not on the end. Each thinks how he will acquit himself in his
condition; but as for the choice of condition, or of country, chance gives them
to us. It is a pitiable thing to see so many Turks, here-tics, and infidels
follow the way of their fathers for the sole reason that each has been imbued
with the prejudice that it is the best. And that fixes for each man his
condition of locksmith, soldier, etc.” Pensees 2.98

Pascal’s
Wager

Belief in God amounts to great potential gain and no
potential loss. Not believing in God means great potential loss and no
potential gain. Great potential gain with no potential loss is better than
great potential loss with no potential gain. So it is better to believe in God
than not to believe in God.

“…Nothing is so important to man as his own state,
nothing is so formidable to him as eternity; and thus it is not natural that
there should be men indifferent to the loss of their existence, and to the
perils of everlasting suffering….” Pascal’s Pensees 3.194.

Pascal
and Evidence of Christianity

“I see many contradictory religions, and consequently all
false save one. Each wants to be believed on its own authority, and threatens
unbelievers. I do not therefore believe them. Every one can say this; every one
can call himself a prophet. But I see that Christian religion wherein
prophecies are fulfilled; and that is what every one cannot do. Pascal gave a
list of messianic prophecies to show the truth of Christianity in Pensees
11:727 (p.315-316)

“…The God of Christians is not a God who is simply the
author of mathematical truths, or of the order of the elements; that is the
view of heathens and Epicureans. He is not merely a God who exercises His
providence over the life and fortunes of men, to bestow on those who worship
Him a long and happy life. That was the portion of the Jews. But the God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Christians, is a God of
love and comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom He
possesses, a God who makes them conscious of their inward wretchedness, and His
infinite mercy, who unites Himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with
humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders them incapable of any
other end than Himself….” Pensees 8.556.

“…All who seek God without Jesus Christ, and who rest in
nature, either find no light to satisfy them, or come to form for themselves a
means of knowing God and serving Him without a mediator. Thereby they fall
either into atheism, or into deism, two things which the Christian religion
abhors almost equally. Without Jesus Christ the world would not exist; for it
should needs be either that it would be destroyed or be a hell….” Pensees
8:556.

Other
Pascal’s Ponderables

4. “To make light of philosophy is to be a true
philosopher.”

101 “I set it down as a fact that if all men knew what each
said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world....”

102. “Some vices only lay hold of us by means of others, and
these, like branches, fall on removal of the trunk.”

100. “...There are different degrees in this aversion to
truth; but all may perhaps be said to have it in some degree, because it is
inseparable from self-love....”

Robert Boyle was the 14th child of the earl of Cork, Ireland. He learned Latin and French as a child and went to Eton when he was 8 years
old. At 14 he was in Florence studying Galileo. Most know of him for Boyle’s
law in chemistry, that at constant temperature the pressure times volume is
constant. Fewer people know that he gave large amounts of money for Bible
translations, learned Greek and Syriac, and he founded the Boyle lectures to
prove the truth of Christianity vs. atheism, theism, paganism, and Islam. He
wrote on Genesis.

Born on Christmas day 1642, and lived 85 years until
1727. His father died two months before he was born, and his step-father was a
rector in a church. He was raised by his grandmother. He was a poor student,
until he got into a fight with another boy, and out of jealousy decided to show
everyone what he could do, and became the top of his class. At 14 Newton was taken out of school to help out on his mother’s farm. He was not a very good
farmhand though, always wasting his time doing mathematics.

He eventually was sent back to school and graduated from Cambridge. In 1665 he discovered the binomial theorem, and differential calculus, which he
called “fluxions” In 1666 he left Cambridge due to the plague, and he started
to think about gravity and the moon, as well as optics and color. He was
elected to the Royal society in 1672 (when he was 30) due to his experiments on
color. One of Newton’s key conclusions, “that the length of the band of colors
a given distance from a spectrum is the same for a prism of any substance
provided the angle was the same” was wrong. This is why Newton thought
telescopes were of limited use, because chromatic aberration was uncorrectable.
Newton later learned of his mistake from others and after that made some
telescopes.

In 1692 Newton had an 18-month attack of insomnia and
nervousness. In 1696 John Bernoulli challenged mathematicians to solve two
problems within six months. Newton did not see the problems until a few months
later, but he solved them the next day, transmitting the papers anonymously.
They figured out who it was though. In 1703 he became the president of the
Royal Society, and did not discover anything else of importance for the last 24
years of his life.

One time an atheist friend of Newton’s came over and saw
this scale model of the solar system that Newton had. He remarked at how
beautiful it was and asked who made it. Newton nonchalantly replied that no one
did; it just made itself. The atheist asked again, got the same answer, and
started to get angry. Newton replied, “if you cannot believe something as
simple as this model cannot make itself, how can you believe the heavens made
themselves?”

Newton wrote more on theology than he did on science.
However, his writings were heretical as he denied that Jesus was God. Newton became wealthy, invested a lot in the stock market which he lost in 1680 in the
“South Sea Bubble.” Intellectual genius does not necessarily mean financial
acumen.

Leibnitz and Newton independently invented calculus.
Leibnitz first used the term “function”.

Leibnitz knew both Latin and German at 8. His father was
a professor of moral philosophy at Leipzig, and died when Gottfried was 8.
After that, Leibnitz was for the most part self-taught, and had begun learning
Greek by age 12. Between 12 and 15 he studied logic and Protestant theology. At
15 he went to the University of Leipzig to study law, which started with a two
year study of Neo-Aristotelian philosophy. He wrote a number of brilliant
essays on law, philosophy “what is an individual”, and mathematics before he
was 21.

Leibnitz thought the Cartesian philosophy was only the
ante-room of truth. He wrote a chapter by chapter critique of Locke’s Essay.
He thought a newborn soul is not a blank tablet, but rather an unworked block
of marble, with hidden veins that affect its ultimate form.

Apart from calculus, Leibnitz was concerned with answering
why God allowed evil. Leibnitz wrote at great lengths to explain why this was
the best of all possible worlds God could have created. Unfortunately Leibnitz
was off-base here. As Christians we do not need to defend this fallen place as
the best of all possible worlds, for it is not. The best of all possible worlds
is Heaven, and as Norm Geisler said, this is the best of all possible paths to
the best of all possible worlds.

While Einstein was getting his Ph.D., he worked in the
patent office, where he was bothered by the Michelson-Morley experiment that
implied the speed of light was constant regardless of direction. Ten years
later in 1905 he wrote his first paper, on the general theory of relativity,
including E = mc2. Later he published his special theory of
relativity, primarily dealing with gravity. Einstein extended Planck’s theory
of quantum mechanics, but he was against results that appeared to make some
natural effects indeterminate. He is famous for his saying, “God does not play
dice with the universe”

Albert Einstein supported Zionism but was a
non-practicing Jew, a liberal pacifist who wisely left Germany when Hitler came to power. He could not see a universe that was self-created,
without God. Yet like many Jews of that time, he was somewhat bitter toward God
for allowing the Holocaust. Concerning the view that western religion is the
basis for science, Einstein said, “To the Sphere of religion belongs the faith
that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that it is
comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that
profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without
religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” (Einstein: His Life
and Times by Philipp Frank. 1953. p.286) Unfortunately Einstein rejected a
personal God, believing instead in the pantheistic God of Benedict Spinoza. He
also rejected rewards or punishment in the afterlife.

Most curiously, Einstein put a “fudge factor” in some of
his equations so a “Big Bang” origin would not be required, because that would
imply a personal God. When others noticed this, he admitted his error and
reluctantly concluded that the universe was created. See The Baker
Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics by Norm Geisler p.213-215 for more
info.

Professor Rejer Hooykas was a Dutch historian of science
who wrote of the profound impact Christianity has had on the rise of modern
science. Thaxton was greatly influenced by him at Harvard in 1971.

With Walter L. Bradley and Clarence Meninga, they
authored, The Mystery of Life’s Origin : Reassessing Current Theories in
1984. In this book they show how temperature, sunlight, and estimated early
atmospheric oxygen (0.2 to 0.4%) making the concentration of organics in the
supposed “primeval organic soup” 10-7 Molar, about the same as the
organics in the ocean water today without the life. Since that book was
published, many non-theistic scientists have abandoned the idea that life could
have evolved in the open water. Current theories include hot water vents, clay
deposits, and panspermia, that life was “seeded” here from another place.

President of the Royal
Medical society. Allowed for evolution and design

George Romanes

1848-1894

biologist, physiologist.
Christian, personal friend of Darwin, lost his faith, returned to
Christianity, unclear if a theistic evolutionist or creationist.

Lord Rayleigh (John
Strutt)

1849-1919

Fluid flow, successor to
Maxwell at Cambridge

John Ambrose Fleming

1849-1945

electronics, electron
tube, thermionic valve

Edward H. Maunder

1851-1928

astronomer at Greenwich

William Mitchell Ramsay

1851-1939

One of the two greatest archaeologists.
Liberal who became a conservative Christian

Sir William Ramsay

(born in Glasgow)

1852-1916

discovered argon, isotopic
chemistry, transmuting elements. Founded the Indian Institute of Technology

Howard A. Kelly

1858-1943

Gynecology/Obstetrics
prof. at Johns Hopkins. Wrote A Scientific Man and His Bible.

George Washington Carver

1864-1943

authority on peanuts and
sweet potatoes at the Tuskegee Institute

Wilbur and Orville Wright

1867-1912, 1871-1948

First successful flight
12/17/1903. Wilbur assisted his father in legal work for the Church of the
United Brethren in Christ

Robert A. Millikan

1868-1953

1923 Nobel (physics)

Douglas Dewar

1875-1957

Wrote books on evolution
prior to being a creationist Christian

Paul Lemoine

1878-1940

ex-Evolutionist and
President of the Geological Society of France

Albert Einstein

1879-1955

non-practicing Jew who
firmly believed in God

Charles Stine

1882-1954

An organic chemist with
DuPont. Wrote the booklet, “A Chemist and His Bible”

A. Rendle Short

1885-1955

Professor of surgery

L. Merson Davies

1890-1960

Geology, paleontology

Sir Cecil P. G. Wakeley

1892-1979

surgeon, president of the
Bible League

Theodosius Dobzhansky

1900-1975

Ukrainian research of
fruit flies. A signer of the 1950 UNESCO document, The Race Question, which
refuted Nazi racial scientific claims. WroteGenetics and the Origin of Species. A
Russian Orthodox whose belief in God was similar to the Jesuit priest
Teilhard de Chardin’s. Dobzhansky criticized the pope’s anti-evolutionary
views and protestant creationists.

Werner Heisenberg

1901-1976

Uncertain which principle
he found

Werner von Braun

1912-1977

Lutheran German. Famous
rocket scientist

A.E. Wilder-Smith

1915-1995

Phys. org. chemistry. 70
pubs. and 30 books.

Lane P. Lester

Living

Wrote Natural Limits to
Biological Change

Hugh Ross

living

astronomer

Michael Denton

1943- living

molecular biologist who
wrote Evolution : A Theory in Crisis that was influential in the
Intelligent Design movement. Later he changed his views and believed more in
evolution

Charles Thaxton, Walter L.
Bradley, Clarence Meninga

living

molecular biologists.
Authored The Mystery of Life’s Origin

Thomas G. Barnes

living

wrote Origin and
Destiny of the Earth’s Magnetic Field

William A. Dembski

living

math, Intelligent Design

Robert Newman

living

Intelligent Design

Dean H. Kenyon

living

Biology, Biophysics

Jeffrey P. Schloss

living

ecology, evolutionary
biology, Int. Design

Jonathan Wells

living

cell biology

Howard J. Van Till

living

astronomer, wrote The
Fourth Day

Davis A. Young

living

old-earth geologist, wrote
Christianity & The Age of the Earth.

Creation Research Society

1963: 10 scientists

Over 700 scientists

H.S. Lipson

quoted in 1980

physicist. “In fact,
evolution became, in a sense, a scientific religion; almost all scientists
have accepted it and many are prepared to “Bend” their observations to fit
with it. .. To my mind, the theory [evolution] does not stand up at all.

Some of
this was taken from Morris, Henry. Men of Science Men of God : Great
Scientists Who Believed the Bible, revised edition. Master Books. 1988. the
AskJeeves.com Web site, Encyclopedia Britannica, and the World
Almanac Book of Facts.

evolution highly
improbable, even over billions of years.. 1977 Nobel prize in chemistry

Robert Jastrow

1925-2008

agnostic astronomer. Wrote
in God and the Astronomers Big Bang theory points to God

Michael Behe

1952-

non-theist, Intelligent
Design proponent

Jeremy Rifkin

quoted in 1983

A highly controversial
evolutions. “We no longer feel ourselves to be guests in someone else’s home
and therefore obliged to make our behavior conform with a set of preexisting
cosmic rules. It is our creation now. WE make the rules. We establish the
parameters of reality.

“Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not
many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many
were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the
wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” 1 Cor.
1:26-27 NIV